Faust was full of ferns, Shakspeare, of rough sketches of the men
and women whom he has made immortal. Saintly Herbert lay side by
side with Saint Augustine's confessions. Milton and Montaigne stood
socially together, and Andersen's lovely "M?rchen" fluttered its
pictured leaves in the middle of an open Plato; while several books
in unknown tongues were half-hidden by volumes of Browning, Keats,
and Coleridge.
In the middle of this fine society, slender and transparent as the
spirit of a shape, stood a little vase holding one half-opened rose,
fresh and fragrant as if just gathered.
Christie smiled as she saw it, and wondered if the dear, dead, or
false woman had been fond of roses.
Then her eye went to the mantel-piece, just above the table, and she
laughed; for, on it stood three busts, idols evidently, but very
shabby ones; for G?the's nose was broken, Schiller's head cracked
visibly, and the dust of ages seemed to have settled upon Linn?us in
the middle. On the wall above them hung a curious old picture of a
monk kneeling in a devout ecstasy, while the face of an angel is
dimly seen through the radiance that floods the cell with divine
light. Portraits of Mr. Power and Martin Luther stared thoughtfully
at one another from either side, as if making up their minds to
shake hands in spite of time and space.
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